Pamela Richey

The Traditional versus Modern Immigrant Narrative: Which Should We Believe?

               The traditional American immigrant narrative is like a barker at a carnival. Come you weary and huddled masses, leave your past behind and give us your future. Follow our rules. Work hard. Assimilate into our culture. Everyone can win. And, if you are really good at the game, you can achieve the ultimate prize, the “American Dream”. You too can have the suburban home, white picket fence and 2.5 children. It is the siren call that keeps immigrants trekking over borders and seas into the United States. The traditional immigrant narrative gives the framework for success in the “new world” from the dominant culture’s point of view. Anyone who follows this outline can then partake of the great experiment in democracy that is our nation, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” But, more modern immigrant narratives pick at this framework and challenge the dominant culture’s cookie cutter immigrant narrative.

               The traditional immigrant narrative follows the basic stages outlined in Objective two.  In “Bread Givers” Max leaves the old country and travels to America. When he arrives he is immediately hit with stage 3 in the form of a freezing blizzard and a foreman who does not want to initially give this greenhorn a job. It is only when Max forces the issue and becomes one of them by simply grabbing the shovel and starting to work that he achieves the “American Dream”—money, wealth. His story works as a model for the immigrant. His story of recent wealth through his own hard work and perseverance only serve to show that Crevecoeur was right in his assessment of the United States that “the rich and the poor are not so far removed from each other as they are in Europe.” This model narrative showcases the hardworking immigrant and can be pointed at by the dominant culture as a paradigm. Immigrants can look at Max’s narrative and know that with hard work they can also achieve his status. Even Sara, who is listening to his immigrant narrative, acknowledges that the story has a fantastical effect on her saying that, “the rest of the story flowed on like magic.” Max is the embodiment of what Crevecoeur speaks about in Letter III, “…the spirit of an industry which is unfettered and unrestrained, because each person works for himself…” Max is “adopted” into the new world through his own hard work and ingenuity. He is “amply rewarded” by acceptance and ownership of his own businesses. This is the fairy tale immigrant narrative.

               Andrew Carnegie’s autobiography follows in a similar vein as Max’s story. He is also an immigrant. He come to the new world, works hard and becomes wealthy.  But it is here that the immigrant narrative shifts slightly. Whereas Max is a poor greenhorn with a language barrier who immigrated with only a small bundle of belongings, Carnegie’s background allowed him access to pathways around barriers that Max and other immigrants have to break through. Carnegie emigrated from Scotland with his family as a child. He did not have the language barrier that so many immigrants like Max come up against. He also had a comfortable childhood. He did not come from poverty. Had his father kept up with technology Carnegie most likely would not have come to America and his narrative would not be of interest to our class. The Carnegie family came to America to prevent poverty, not to escape it. They also had a support system in place upon their arrival, a luxury not provided for in Max’s narrative.

               This same pattern can also be found in Divakaruni’s poem “Restroom”. Each stage is covered in the traditional immigrant narrative in the relatively short period of time it takes to find a bathroom in which the poem’s speaker can relieve herself. She is leaving the old world and the fields and work of her old home to work in her husband’s liquor store. The need to use the restroom and the language barrier are obstacles both figurative and literal in her narrative. Some discrimination might also be implied in the area in which her husband has been forced to live which leads to the robbery of his store. It is when she enters the restroom that her assimilation takes place. She is now one of those women who just needs to go the bathroom. She may not be one of them the instant she enters the restroom, but the line “The air fills with a perfume I don't know. I step out, breathe deeply, fill my lungs with it. If I can count to twenty without letting go, everything will be all right” shows the speaker taking in the new world and customs, assimilating. She is filling her lungs with this new world and its perfume, taking it into her body.

But why is this traditional immigrant narrative used so frequently? Could it be because the traditional immigrant narrative is what the dominant culture wants to hear? In the article “Review of Short Stories by African American Immigrant to USA” Jess Row criticizes the author Chimamanda Adichie for falling into the traditional immigrant narrative. Row lumps Adichie in with other writers of the traditional immigrant narrative and highlights two stories he believes to show “…that Adichie is delivering the ‘news’ the West wants to hear about Africa: pitiful victims, incorrigible villains, inspirational survivors.” Isn’t that what the traditional immigrant narrative does? Row then commends Adichie for changing her narrative, for “…exposing, while also at times playing on, her audience’s prejudices…” This is what the modern immigrant narrative tries to accomplish.

“The English Lesson” bridges the gap between the traditional and modern immigrant narrative. The over arcing storyline follows Lali as she assimilates both by learning English, but also in the way she is pushing away from her husband and his more traditional old world views. But, Mohr also uses Mrs. Hamma to show the prejudices of the dominant culture and how the dominant culture pushes the traditional immigrant narrative on those who have immigrated. Why is Mrs. Hamma there, teaching English to immigrants? She is heard frequently explaining that it is because of her own traditional immigrant story, “’My grandparents came here from Germany as poor immigrants, working their way up. I’m not one to forget a thing like that!’” She is pushing her own traditional story onto the students in her class. When William lingers on his description of his home town she pushes him to speed it up and go on to his life here. Don’t dwell on the past. When Diego begins to talk of not assimilating, she again tries to speed him through to get to the next stage. Mrs. Hamma also prejudges who is the model immigrant. She wants Mr. Paczkowski to continue in college and seems only pleasantly surprised when Lali and William talk of furthering their education. She has already decided who will be the perfect immigrant, who will have the American dream.

The modern immigrant narrative dispels the myth that hard work and assimilation are all it takes to guarantee the American dream. Aunt Pratima and Bikram-uncle in “Silver Pavements, Golden Roofs”, while not perfect examples of assimilation, are definitely working hard to attain the American dream. Bikram-uncle wears coveralls, drinks beer, is willing to take the women to the mall and buy them pizza, but he has by no means been given access to the American dream. He actively questions and challenges the traditional immigrant narrative. He tells Jayanti “’Things here aren’t as perfect as people at home like to think. We all thought we’d become millionaires.’…’The Americans hate us…putting us down because we’re dark-skinned foreigners,…You’ll see it for yourself soon enough.’” He shows the traditional immigrant narrative for what it has become to him, a con. Instead of the American dream, Bikram-uncle has been given the consolation prize. He is unable to attain that which is promised in the traditional immigrant narrative because the dominant culture will not allow it. When he gets close they take everything away from him. “’This damn country, like a dain, a witch—it pretends to give and then snatches everything back.’”

The traditional immigrant narrative entices the reader to believe that the American dream can be had by all as long as you follow the steps, but the modern immigrant narrative challenges it. The modern immigrant narrative asks who is excluded, why did you lie?

Assimilation or Survival

               The immigrant chooses to come to the United States, chooses to overcome all obstacles, chooses to assimilate with the American dominant culture, then may or may not choose to meld that with the ethnic identity they left behind (Objective 2b). What does it mean to assimilate? According to the syllabus, it is to become similar. If an immigrant comes over to the United States and buys into the traditional immigrant narrative, then he or she most likely already made the decision to assimilate at least partially in order to achieve the American Dream. This is the immigrant story, not the minority narrative. While there are examples of outright resistance to assimilation in the minority narratives we have read this semester, there are just as many examples of a subversive assimilation that allows the minority culture to survive.

The immigrant narrative accepts assimilation as the normal course of events, such as the case of Jayanti in “Silver Pavement, Golden Roofs.” Jayanti may still feel the ingrained need for her traditions, but she is still yearning to assimilate and leave the old behind. When she is on the plane for America she envies the blonde flight attendant and is eager to change her hair cut as soon as she lands in America. In her dreams of a college education, the reason she has come, she looks like every other student. She has taken off the sari and wears a plaid skirt. Her hair is no longer in a thick braid down her back, but is now bobbed and Americanized. In her mind, this will make her like all the other students. She will be an American. Jayanti’s dream of assimilation may not be perfect.  Jayanti will still come home after these classes to a small apartment that smells of stale curry and an aunt who despite having lived in the United States for years, still wears a sari. Her aunt and uncle have not left the old country behind completely and Jayanti comments several times that she feels as if she hasn’t even left home. When she dreams of her life as an American student she cuts her fantasy off when it veers onto a path that her traditional culture does not allow. And while Jayanti might be fair enough to circumvent the color code, but her uncle is not. He complains that his dark skin is the reason why he has not done better for himself in America and why his shop was burnt down. Toward the end of the story she understand the sacrifice that comes from assimilation “…that the beauty and the pain should be part of each other.”

The minority narrative though shows that there are layers under that veneer of immigrant assimilation. The characters in “The Man to Send Rain Clouds” are not resisting assimilation as much as they are melding the dominant culture with theirs own needs and culture. (It is also interesting to note that the icon of the dominant culture in this story is the Catholic Church and in many ways is considered to be a minority in its own right.) Instead of taking on the full coat of the dominant culture, they have woven it into who they are. The Native Americans go to mass, they respect the priest, but they still believe as they want to, not as the Church dictates they must. Why? It is a way to navigate the dominant culture and still keep to the old ways. If they respect the Catholic priest by listening to him and his advice he is more likely to leave them to their own devices. The priest also uses this subversive melding by taking the holy water to the burial for Teofilo. In his own way, the priest lent just enough of a Christian burial to change it into something new.

In many ways education is the great assimilator. In “Soap and Water” it is education that ultimately gains the narrator’s acceptance by the dominant culture by noticing her. Education may even help Jayanti to overcome color code barriers. But, in “Elethia” education seems to stall assimilation. It is through Elethia’s “education” at the restaurant that the she and the boys come to understand that the statue of Uncle Albert is the actual body stuffed for the pleasure of the dominant culture. They resist the dominant culture by taking the body and burning it. She later uses the education afforded to her by the dominant culture to further seek out the abuses of the dominant culture. But the boys join the army which is an extreme form of assimilation in itself. They write to tell Elethia that they are learning skills from the dominant culture that will help them in their fight against it. The sole reason for them to assimilate is to subvert what they have learned and use it against the dominant culture.  “The Lesson” also highlights how education can be used not to assimilate, but create an opposition. Miss Moore might be seen as fully assimilated into the dominant culture at the beginning of the story, but by the end of the lesson her questions to the children make her own assimilation questionable. When Sugar that “…this is not a democracy…Equal chance to pursue happiness means an equal crack at the dough…” Miss Moore is ecstatic at the reaction she has forced and tries to push it further. Like Elethia and the boys she is using her education to try to teach the children to look beyond assimilation and use the dominant culture to create their own understanding of what it means to be an American.

If a minority narrative shows any assimilation to the dominant culture, it is usually with a caveat. I am not assimilating I am melding my culture with yours because you have forced the issue. You forced the assimilation, I will grudgingly accept because I have no other choice if I want my own culture to survive.